Higher storage bit densities in magnetic media used in disk drives have reduced the size (volume) of data cells to the point where the cell dimensions are limited by the grain size of the magnetic material. Although grain size can be reduced further, the data stored within the cells may not be thermally stable. That is, random thermal fluctuations at ambient temperatures may be sufficient to erase data. This state is described as the superparamagnetic limit, which determines the maximum theoretical storage density for a given magnetic media. This limit may be raised by increasing the coercivity of the magnetic media or by lowering the temperature. Lowering the temperature may not always be practical when designing hard disk drives for commercial and consumer use. Raising the coercivity, on the other hand, may result in a requirement for write heads that incorporate higher-magnetic-moment materials, or techniques such as perpendicular recording (or both).
One additional solution has been proposed, which uses heat to lower the effective coercivity of a localized region on the magnetic media surface and writes data within this heated region. The data state becomes “fixed” upon cooling the media to ambient temperatures. This technique is broadly referred to as “thermally assisted (magnetic) recording” (TAR or TAMR), “energy assisted magnetic recording” (EAMR), or “heat-assisted magnetic recording” (HAMR). The term “HAMR” is used herein to refer to all of TAR, TAMR, EAMR, and HAMR.
There is an ongoing need to improve the performance of HAMR-enabled write heads.